"Beatifical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Johnnie Duncan presented one of the most beatific scenes I ever saw. Everybody was in the temper of an angel. There was nothing doing—no whist at the table, no reading out of upper bunks, no love song from the peak, and no fierce argument on the lockers. ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... vision of Moses was interrupted after the manner of a passion, and was not permanent like the beatific vision, wherefore he was as yet a seer from afar. For this reason his vision did not entirely lose ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... mojadderah has such a soothing effect on the nerves; it conduces to cheerfulness, especially when the raw onion or the leek is taken with it. After a good round pewter platter of this delicious dish and a dozen leeks, I feel as if I could do the work of all mankind. And I am then in such a beatific state of mind that I would share with all mankind my sack of lentils and my pipkin of olive oil. I wonder not at Esau's extravagance, when he saw a steaming mess of it. For what ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... crept under the cage, completely singing every hair from the cat's body. The felicitous adder was slowly burning in two and busily engaged in impregnating his organic system with his own venom. The joyful rat had lost his tail by a falling bar of iron; and the beatific rabbit, perforated by a red-hot nail, looked as if nothing would be more grateful than a cool corner in some Esquimaux farm-yard. The members of the delectated convocation were all huddled together in the bottom of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... as knowledge of the true, monistic ethic as training for the good, monistic aesthetic as pursuit of the beautiful—these are the three great departments of our monism: by the harmonious and consistent cultivation of these we effect at last the truly beatific union of religion and science, so painfully longed after by so many to-day. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good, these are the three august Divine Ones before which we bow the knee in adoration; in the unforced combination and mutual supplementing of these we gain the pure idea of God.[20] ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... and clasped the back of the chair, while he hurried toward her, and in passionate emotion, not knowing what he was doing, knelt down near the chair into which she had sunk, and laid his head on her hand. That was Anton. Not a word was spoken. Sabine gazed on the kneeling form as at some beatific vision, and gently laid her other hand ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... not have worried. It would have taken more than one pie to have injured the digestion of such a boy as Towsley. He lay in beatific slumber, his sunny hair gleaming in the rays from his visitor's candle, his long lashes sweeping his dirty cheeks, and his lips ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... most dying saints; They see e'en here the beatific sight; The spirit then breaks thro' this world's restraints, And enters into heaven's ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... can touch Shapes so dignified ... and Dutch; Only art like yours can show How the pine-logs gleam and glow, Till the fire-light laughs and passes 'Twixt the tankards and the glasses, Touching with responsive graces All those grave Batavian faces,— Making bland and beatific ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Frothingham carelessly. "I didn't find out what he was getting at. Doctor Schoolman always looks beatific when we sing. While he continues to beam I shall still consider that singing in the choir is about the most pious ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... were but parts of a dreamy vision, like the heavenly city of Sir Percivale, to attain which he passed across the golden bridge that burned after him as he vanished in the intolerable light of the Beatific Vision. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... had his notion of the general shape and purport, the gross material body of the thing, but he did not trouble me with it, while we sat tranced together in the presence of its soul. He seemed, at times, so lost in the beatific vision, that he forgot my stumblings in the philological darkness, till I appealed to him for help. Then he would read aloud with that magnificent rhythm the Italians have in reading their verse, and the obscured meaning would seem to shine ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... remains in part, viz. as to the substance of its knowledge. And if this be understood to mean that it remains the same, not identically but generically, it is absolutely true; since faith is of the same genus, viz. knowledge, as the beatific vision. On the other hand, hope is not of the same genus as heavenly bliss: because it is compared to the enjoyment of bliss, as movement is to rest ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... steep himself in music: he found both food and love in it. He had such a hunger for happiness and so great a power of enjoying it that the imperfections of the orchestra never worried him: he would stay for two or three hours, drowsy and beatific, and wrong notes or defective taste never provoked in him more than an indulgent smile: he left his critical faculty outside: he was there to love, not to judge. Around him the audience sat motionless, with eyes half closed, letting itself ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... and paid the fare for her, but he stayed where he was, in the doorway, thinking with beatific relief that after all nothing had ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the ocean cliff, and there, while the salt wind whistles through my hair, I will be stronger than you, safer than you, richer than you, happier than you. Richer than you, for I shall have for my companion the beatific vision of God, and of all things and beings God- like, fair, noble, just, and merciful. Stronger than you, because virtue will give me a power over the hearts of men such as your force cannot give you; and you will have to come to my lonely cell, and ask me to advise you, and teach you, and ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... a Rampart. Mammon led them on, Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From heav'n, for ev'n in heav'n his looks and thoughts 680 Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heav'ns pavement, trod'n Gold, Then aught divine or holy else enjoy'd In vision beatific: by him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransack'd the Center, and with impious hands Rifl'd the bowels of thir mother Earth For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Op'nd into the Hill a spacious wound And dig'd out ribs of Gold. Let none admire 690 That ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... laughter. For she had learned to conceal her unshared contempt for the holy heroines, and found a compensating pleasure in the sense of amused superiority, and the secret duality which it gave to her consciousness. She even went so far as to ransack the library for these beatific biographies, and when she found herself rewarded for "diligent reading" her amusement was at its apogee. And thus, when the first awe and interest of the strange life receded, Eileen was left standing apart as on ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... impression of what Bishop Berkeley calls 'the philosophy of fire' if we set before our minds in this connection, the raging element whose strength is in destruction. Let us rather picture to ourselves as the type of fire the benign and beatific solar heat, the quickener and fosterer of all terrestrial life. For according to Zeno, there were two kinds of fire, the one destructive, the other what we may call 'constructive,' and which he called 'artistic'. This latter kind of fire, ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... were parted as if with impetuous breath; the whole head leaned slightly forward, giving prominence to the chin, which in reality retreated, a defect chiefly noticeable in profile. Ted had painted what he saw. It might have been the head of a saint looking for the Beatific Vision; it was only that of ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... a florid gown, was concentrated, almost passionate; it came straight at him through a double eye-glass elevated on a tortoiseshell stem. The clergyman endeavoured to suggest by his attitude that he took no part in the staring or the talk; he smiled out to sea with an air of beatific union with Nature. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Souls, "The theological basis for the feast is the doctrine that the souls, which, on departing from the body are not perfectly cleansed from venial sins, or have not fully atoned for past transgressions, are debarred from the Beatific Vision, and that the faithful on earth can help them by prayers, almsdeeds, and especially by the holy sacrifice of the Mass. In the early days of Christianity the names of the departed brethren were entered in ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... Pelagius, Luther, and Calvin. His failure to recognise the clear distinction between the natural and the supernatural was the source of most of his errors. According to him the state of innocence in which our first parents were created, their destination to the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, and all the gifts bestowed upon them for the attainment of this end were due to them, so that had they persevered during life they should have merited eternal happiness as a reward for their ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... A beatific vision of himself took form in his mind—of himself growing grey and pleasurably tired, surrounded by opulence and the demonstrative respect of everybody, smiling with virtuous content as he strolled along between his ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... how the Ideas of Plato, the "sub specie aeternitatis" of Spinoza, the "Liberation" from "the Will" of Schopenhauer, the "Beatific Vision" of the Catholic saints are all analogues and parallels, expressed under different symbols, of the same universal feeling. The difference between these philosophic statements of the situation and mine, is that, ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... angel is in adoration; four saints stand on the earth below. The entire conception is rendered with the utmost delicacy: the grace and beauty of the Madonna are of exactly the quality to make her appearance a beatific vision. ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... narrow space, uttering, as it did so, those curious little guttural sounds of pleasure that only an animal of the feline species knows how to make expressive of supreme happiness. Its stiffened legs and arched back made it appear larger than usual, and the black visage wore a smile of beatific joy. Its eyes blazed magnificently; ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... resurrection" (20:6), when the bodies of the saints will "be fashioned like unto his glorious body" (Phil. 3:21), and thus become the first fruits with their risen Head. Those who come up at the second resurrection will not attain to that beatific state. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Owain, though a zealous catholic, has embraced, in the fullest extent, the Talmudic doctrine of an earthly paradise, distinct from the celestial abode of the just, and serving as a place of initiation, preparatory to perfect bliss, and to the beatific vision.—See the Rabbi Menasse ben Israel, in a treatise called Nishmath Chajim, i.e. The ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... office if he was ready; and crying out, O pray, pray! Praise, praise, praise,—he was turned over, and died almost without any struggle, with his hands lifted up unto heaven, whither his soul ascended, to enjoy the beatific presence of his Lord ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Beatific Vision, our Will is also to be glorified, and then we shall be happy in ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... that gave her listener such an exquisite thrill of pleasure? He did not stop to consider, for he was not in an analytical mood at that time. He was on the crest of the spiritual wave that was sweeping him heavenward, or towards some beatific state of which he had not dreamt before. His face glowed ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... O beatific life! Who is there shall gainsay, Your great refusal's victory, your little loss, Deserting vanity for the more perfect way, The sweeter service of the most ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... Fernando, and my friend had promised to take me with him. Now, this was a great favour. St. Fernando is one of the patrons of Seville; he has been dead a long time, but his corpse refuses to putrefy, like those of ordinary mortals; it is a sacred corpse, and in a beatific state of preservation. Three times a year the remains of the holy man are uncovered, and the faithful are admitted to gaze on his incorruptible features. This was not one of the regular occasions; the Cardinal ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... beatific!"—Lady Sandgate enviously, quite ruefully, felt it. But any further treatment of the question was checked by the re-entrance of the footman—a demonstration explained by the concomitant appearance ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... the beatific effects of the cleansing of the heart from all sin is soul-rest. It always accompanies the ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... afterwards frequently visited by Kublai Kahn for sanctuary and rest after his labors as Emperor of China, India, Persia, Afghanistan, Mongolia and half of Europe. Now only ruins and tombs remain to mark this former 'Garden of Beatific Days.' The pious monks of Baroun Kure found in the underground chambers of the ruins manuscripts that were much older than Erdeni Dzu itself. In these my Maramba Meetchik-Atak found the prediction that the Hutuktu of Zain who should ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... head, his face beatific with joy. He resembled the youthful Saint George after slaying the dragon. She was startled. Her eyes positively lightened; he listened for ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... stream. There's beauty in the smilin' valley and in the everlastin' hills. Therefore, fellow citizens—THEREFORE, fellow citizens, allow me to introduce to you the future Governor of these United States—Senator William Bayhone." And he sat down with such a beatific smile of self-satisfaction that a fiend would not have had the heart to say he had ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... Duomo) to the stone on San Primo over Como, while the signorina held on her note! You listened, you gasped—you thought of a poet in his dungeon, and suddenly, behold, his chains are struck off!—you thought of a gold-shelled tortoise making his pilgrimage to a beatific shrine!—you thought—you knew not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Are the souls in Purgatory sure of their salvation? A. The souls in Purgatory are sure of their salvation, and they will enter heaven as soon as they are completely purified and made worthy to enjoy that presence of God which is called the Beatific Vision. ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... beginning to tell, even in the case of their valiant parent. At such times she was, of course, simply dreaming day dreams of the life she could have had if, as "he" had said, she had been twenty now; and the beatific expression that would come into her face was scarcely one of ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... coming hour, we talked gaily of our coasting voyage, of our arrival at Athens. We would make our home of one of the Cyclades, and there in myrtle-groves, amidst perpetual spring, fanned by the wholesome sea-breezes—we would live long years in beatific union—Was there such a thing as ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... the next page of the same tract it is said, "For one prutah given as alms to a poor man one is made partaker of the beatific vision." (See also Midrash ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... been so full of dangers, was ignored; and the future, the dangers of which were much more real, was not for the moment considered. Jefferson was sworn in with his head encircled by a halo of beautiful phrases; and he and his followers were so well satisfied with this beatific vision that they entirely overlooked the desirability of redeeming their own past or of providing for their country's future. Sufficient unto the day was the popularity thereof. The Federalists themselves must be conciliated, and the national organization achieved ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... itself, though from a practical point of view he made a lamentable mistake, was aesthetically justified. No "orb," as Tennyson said, is a "perfect star" while we walk therein. Aloofness is essential to the Beatific Vision. If we entered its portals Heaven would ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... blest spirit! in thy shrine of light, Life's visions rise to thy celestial sight; If that bright sphere where raptured seraphs glow, Permit communion with this world of woe; And sore, if thus our fond affections deem, Hope mocks us not, for Heaven inspires the dream— Benignant shade! the beatific kiss That seal'd thy welcome to the shores of bliss, No holier joy instill'd, than then wilt feel If thine the task thy kindred's woes to heal; If hovering yet, with viewless ministry, In scenes which Memory consecrates to thee, Thou soothe with binding balm ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... assisted by a woman of a masculine cast of face and one eye, by name Anfisushka, who performed the duties of housekeeper, poultry-woman, and laundress. Vassily Ivanovitch walked up and down during the whole of dinner, and with a perfectly happy, positively beatific countenance, talked about the serious anxiety he felt at Napoleon's policy, and the intricacy of the Italian question. Arina Vlasyevna took no notice of Arkady. She did not press him to eat; leaning her round face, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... merchant. Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable man a man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the world. But he seems to have thought that going to Court was like going to heaven ; that to see princes and princesses was a kind of beatific vision ; that the exquisite felicity enjoyed by royal persons Was not confined to themselves, but was communicated by some mysterious efflux or reflection to all who were suffered to stand at their toilettes or to bear their trains. He overruled all his daughter's objections, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... intimated not only a permanent suspension of tariff regulations in his favor, but a future statue of heroic size in the palace plaza. Whereat Mr. Howland turned swiftly to Dan at his side, and from behind his napkin momentarily altered an expression of beatific if humble gratitude, and winked ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... knowledge the idea of good is last seen and with difficulty, but when seen is inferred to be the author of good and right—parent of the lord of light in this world, and of truth and understanding in the other. He who attains to the beatific vision is always going upwards; he is unwilling to descend into political assemblies and courts of law; for his eyes are apt to blink at the images or shadows of images which they behold in them—he cannot enter into the ideas of those who have never in their lives understood the relation ...
— The Republic • Plato
... if she had looked woman-y, girl-y, even remotely, affectedly feminine, Barton would doubtless have floundered heroically through some protesting lie. But to the frank, blunt, little-boyishness of her he succumbed suddenly with a beatific grin of relief. "Yes, we certainly are!" he ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... part, do not believe that any conceivable extension of creatural faculties, or any conceivable hallowing of creatural natures, can make the creature able to gaze upon God. I know that it is often said that the joy of the future life for men is what the theologians call 'the beatific vision,' in which there shall be direct sight of God, using that word in its highest sense, as applied to the perceptions of the spirit, and not of the sense. But I do not think the Bible teaches us that. It ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... successful mariner from the troubled sea of time. Life has its storms and its calms, its casualties and dangers; it also has the bright twilight in the shadow of those eternal hills where existence is immortal and joy beatific ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... When she spoke to her darling, every word was a caress, and the plaintive lines vanished from her mouth. Under the child's kisses, her lips quivered and her eyes filled with ineffable happiness like the eyes of an ecstatic at a beatific vision. If she happened to be conversing with other people or listening to their talk, she would appear to have sudden lapses of attention, momentary absence of mind, and this was for her daughter—for ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... and craning her soft white neck, she saw Cousin Emelene, with her gray kitten under one arm and a large suitcase in her other hand, coming up the steps. There was a beatific expression in her gentle, faded eyes, and her lips were quivering uncertainly. When she caught sight of Genevieve's sweet face back of the bored expressmen, she gave a little cry, ran forward, set down her suitcase and clasped her ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... once were persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Great indeed is their reward, for it is no less than the very beatific vision to contemplate and adore that supreme moral beauty, of which all earthly beauty, all nature, all art, all poetry, all music, are but phantoms and parables, hints and hopes, dim reflected rays of the clear light of ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... this remarkable expedition. We found that all our possessions fitted very easily into the two canoes, and we divided our personnel, six in each, taking the obvious precaution in the interests of peace of putting one Professor into each canoe. Personally, I was with Challenger, who was in a beatific humor, moving about as one in a silent ecstasy and beaming benevolence from every feature. I have had some experience of him in other moods, however, and shall be the less surprised when the thunderstorms suddenly ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... face; and never were the two gazers tired of gazing, and of smiling as they gazed. Luise, they thought, had seemed a little sad as well as weary when she alighted at the dear familiar door. But this smile was so full of joy unspeakable, so fraught with beatific meaning, so reflective of beatific vision, that it laughed their fears away, and spoke volumes where the seeming sorrow had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... incidental exhaustion, there is another reason why this beatific association must have its time-limit; for, unfortunately, one's Auto-Comrade is always of the same sex as one's self, and in youth, at least, if the presence of the complementary part of creation is long denied, there comes a time when this denial surges higher and higher ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... resurrection of the just, When the last trumpet with earth-shaking sound Shall wake her sleepers from their couch profound; Then, when that spotless and immortal mind In a material mould once more enshrined, With wonted charms shall wake seraphic love, How will the beatific sight improve Her heavenly beauties in ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... flung himself on the bed with uncontrollable sorrow. One arm lay over the breast and partly round the neck of the body, which breathed no longer, and whose face was lit up by a beatific smile; for Jim Travers was with mother and Maggie and father, and they should go ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... and left to himself. After all, it was very true what Jack Wentworth said. They might be a bad lot, but they were gentlemen (according to Wodehouse's understanding of the word) with whom he had been associated; and beatific visions of peers and baronets and honourables, amongst whom his own shabby person had figured, without feeling much below the common level, crossed his mind with all the sweetness which belongs to ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... darkened into a Moloch of cruelty, unless you remember that, side by side with them, or rather underlying them and determining them, are aspects of the divine nature to which only child-like confidence and calm beatific returns of love do rightly respond. The terror of the Lord is a garb which our sins force upon the love of the Lord, and when the one is presented it brings with it the other. Never should they be parted in our thoughts or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... rampart. Mammon led them on— Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific. By him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Opened into the hill a spacious wound, And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire That riches grow ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... rapidly, and oh, how earnestly! He was evidently full of his subject; he was well aware how short might be the time allowed him to impart to his friends those sacred, precious, all-important truths he had himself learned. As he went on speaking, his countenance seemed to assume an almost beatific expression; the tones of his voice were full of melody. His friends listened with rapt attention, tears streaming down from their eyes, their breasts heaved; but not one moved his position, not a gesture was made. ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... beatific, convalescent mood in which one is sure one will never grumble again. She smiled at anybody who happened to pass by and catch her eye. She would have smiled just like that, with just that friendly, boneless familiarity at the devil if he had appeared, ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... perceived that although neither master nor man was in such a state as could be described as "intoxicated," yet both were in that semi-beatific condition which ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... beatific coast I've come to visit thee, For I am Frognall Dibdin's ghost," Says Dibdin's ghost ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... it's very fine, Messiou," said the general confidently. And in the interest of international courtesy he immediately assumed the beatific expression he usually kept ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... end declared by Bhishma in the previous section is the success of yoga, or freedom from decrepitude and death, or death at will, or absorption into Brahma, or independent existence in a beatific condition. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... with many others. Next to him was Charles Copeman, unwounded, waiting to go forward with his bombers. Presently came Warren, bright and jaunty as a bird, and carrying his left arm. 'I'm all right,' said Montag, 'got a cushy one here.' On his heels came G.A.; his face was that of a man fresh from the Beatific Vision. Much later, when I had managed to get transport to push him away, I asked him, 'Got your stick, G.A.?' This was a stout stave on which he had carved, patiently and skilfully, his name, ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... then stand free before the Almighty. He may tremble, but he is not afraid. For his strength of soul is grounded not in the external world but in his own ideal. If we are born under a lucky star, and are fortunate and happy lovers of the ideal, the ecstasy of the mystic's beatific vision is ours. But even if we are born under an unlucky star, and are misfortunate and unhappy lovers of the ideal, we still have the ideal to which we can hold fast and save ourselves from being shattered in our despairs, from dying in spirit, which ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... hell and purgatory before he may enjoy the "beatific vision?" Are temptation, sin, sorrow, and even death, angels of God sent forth to minister to the perfection of man? or are they fiends which, in some foul way, have invaded the otherwise fair regions in which ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... any human being more utterly out of place than David in this sail-boat, and never was any human being more serenely unconscious of his unfitness. David's frame of mind was one of calm, beatific enjoyment. He was quite unconscious of the increase of the distance between his boat and the shore, which grew greater every moment, and equally unobservant of the lapse of time. In times of great enjoyment the hours fly quickly by, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... by gleaming locks of black hair; and as he stood there, sure and secure, a sublime divinity, and played the violin, it seemed as if the whole creation obeyed his melodies. He was the man-planet about which the universe moved with measured solemnity and ringing out beatific rhythms. Those great lights, which so quietly gleaming swept around, were they stars of heaven, and that melodious harmony which arose from their movements, was it the song of the spheres, of which poets and seers have reported so many ravishing things? At times, when I endeavored ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... sweeping circles, raining down the ecstasy of their night-song; still above, far beyond them, across a zenith pure, transparent, ineffably pink, illumined wisps of clouds were trailing their scarf-like shapes. It was a scene of beatific peace. Across the fields came the sound of a distant bell. It was the Angelus. The ploughmen stopped to doff their hats, the women to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... monopoly of beatific visions. It offers much in that direction. It draws a picture of a future State of great riches and general equality; and the picture is glorified by a vision of general brotherhood. To some this ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire." He held that the punishment of the damned is two-fold. The greater punishment, called the pain of loss, consists in the loss of the Beatific Vision, a suffering so great that the genius of St. Augustine can hardly translate it in human language. "To be separated from God," he says, "is a torment as great as the very greatness of God." The other pain of the reprobate consists in the torment of ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... in beatific tones, and the three four-legged creatures stood on their hind legs and, joining paws and wings with the chicken, went through a solemn Alice-in-Wonderland-like dance. This was always terminated abruptly ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... who can hearken with such rapt reverence as to catch some sound of the tread in divine movement, we may apprehend that a genuine poem implies, for its conception, an illuminated plenitude of mind, and involves in its production a beatific visionariness. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... ecclesiastical writers, as if it were our duty to understand them; which I am sure it is not. And I defy the greatest divine to produce any law either of God or man, which obliges me to comprehend the meaning of omniscience, omnipresence, ubiquity, attribute, beatific vision, with a thousand others so frequent in pulpits, any more than that of eccentric, idiosyncracy, entity, and the like. I believe I may venture to insist farther, that many terms used in Holy Writ, particularly by St Paul, might with more discretion ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... bagatelle, to be disposed of with the same serene self-control that the first had been. A weight of brooding melancholy was lifted from the spirits: the world wore a happier look. The only drawback to this beatific state of mind was a marked indisposition to remain quiet, and a restless aversion to giving attention to the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... the arrival of the first gift, a little silver vase from Miss Allison McIntyre, which would always suggest the donor's love of flowers and her garden which she shared lavishly with the whole Valley, Betty had been in a beatific state of mind over the loving favor showed her by her friends. Her pleasure reached high tide, however, when the last one arrived, a box marked from Warwick Hall. It was from Madam Chartley. The box was so big that they made all sorts of wild guesses as to its contents. Layer after layer ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Letitia would be far too intent on counting stitches, and Miss Asenath would dream, and to Arethusa, Miss Eliza's choice of reading matter was anything but interesting; but Miss Eliza herself would be made beatific. She considered herself somewhat gifted as an elocutionist; during her course at the old Freeport Seminary, now so long ago, she had had the most lady-like of instruction. She prided herself on her ability to put "expression" into her reading. Thus would amiability ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... throughout all ages and all nations,—like that more awful communion of saints in the holy church universal,—and feel a sympathy with departed genius, and with the enlightened and the gifted minds of other countries, as they appear before him, in the transports of a sort of vision beatific, bowing down at the same shrines, and flowing with the same holy love of whatever is most pure, and fair, and exalted, and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... came, and do you know, he has made a beatific confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see me ... 'remembering' (he added) 'that Mr. Browning took Saturday!!' So I let him mistake the one week for the other—'Mr. ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Would it be too bromid. to say I wish you were here? I put out my hand in the darkness, & yours wasn't there. My dear, my dear, how desolate—Oh you understand it only too well with your supercilious grin & your superior eye-glasses & your beatific Oxonian ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... voices behind a wall! I, who had said that "God ordains nothing that is not for good"—was suddenly ready to believe that He had ordained the death of the lover to whom His laws had guided me! I, to whom had been vouchsafed the beatific vision of an Angel—an Angel who had said— "God thinks no evil of thee—desires no wrong towards thee—has no punishment in store for thee—give thyself into His Hand, and be at peace!" was already flinching and turning away from the Faith that should keep me strong! A sense of ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... replied the spinster, lifting a beatific glance and smile to the ceiling, "I am still engaged with my 'Philosophical, Psychological and ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... relative and temporary as the various existing forms of human activity? Above all, how is it possible to take one's self seriously, to spend one's thought on the petty interests of a petty individuality, when the beatific vision of universal knowledge, of absolute being, has once dawned on the dazzled beholder? The charm and the savor of everything relative and phenomenal is gone. A man may go on talking, teaching, writing—but the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nothing if not innocent—like this one of yours. He would not have agreed with Gloriani any more than you. He used to come and see me very often, and in those days I thought his tunic and his long neck infallible symptoms of genius. His talk was all of gilded aureoles and beatific visions; he lived on weak wine and biscuits, and wore a lock of Saint Somebody's hair in a little bag round his neck. If he was not a Beato Angelico, it was not his own fault. I hope with all my heart that Mr. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... dream," said Skippy sulkily. Then he remembered that all through the hideous phantasmagoria, in the smoky mists of low gambling dens, in the drizzle of midnight conclaves, across the sepulchral silences of leaden prisons, there had flitted the beatific vision of an angel with velvety eyes and the softest ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... The first beatific vision that was to greet my gaze would be, of course, that one which I was to behold most frequently throughout the aeons without end—even the face of that radiant being who had gone before, to await me in the angelhood; where, beaming seraphic upon me forever, it was to be to me the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... say: 'Now why do you suppose papa enjoys it?—We just can't get him to give it up!' And now Julia is president of the Woman's Federation, has stomach trouble, has had two operations, and is suffering untold agonies with acute culturitis. And yet," Aunt Martha would say through a beatific smile, "she's a good-enough woman in many ways, and I wouldn't say anything against ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... experienced feelings and emotions, like those high and holy ones of which I would endeavour now to preserve a faint transcript. Come then, let us unite our ideas, let us speak together, but let us yet mention as present, those beatific thoughts and imaginings which are indeed past. Let us ever remember and cherish in our heart of hearts those golden fore-tastes of future eternity, or (according to Platonism) those rapturous reminiscences of past, which prove beyond logical demonstration, the existence of some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... turned. Every now and then he halted in his promenade, stuck his hands inside his baggy pockets, and tilted slowly to and fro on the points of his carpeted toes. Anon he took his pipe from his mouth, and blew out big whiffs of smoke, glancing around the while with an expression of beatific contentment. The whole appearance of the man was an embodiment of the holiday spirit, the unrestrained enjoyment of one who has escaped from work, and sees before him a pageant of golden idle hours. Margot ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... first time in three days, broke into a beatific smile, and for a moment I was disposed to punch it, thinking, of course, that he meant to guy me. But he saw this intention and sprang back, holding his palms outward in an attitude of alert protest; yet the smile continued, now to be followed by ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... philosophy can speak lightly of it. Rationalism starts from the idea of such a whole and builds downward. Movement and change are absorbed into its immutability as forms of mere appearance. When you accept this beatific vision of what is, in contrast with what goes on, you feel as if you had fulfilled an intellectual duty. 'Reality is not in its truest nature a process,' Mr. McTaggart tells us, 'but a stable and timeless state.'[2] 'The true knowledge of God begins,' ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Galahad, as "rather a mild youth." His own Galahad is not the rapt seer of the vision beatific, but a more flesh-and-blood character, who sometimes has cold fits in which he doubts whether the quest is not a fool's errand; and whether even Sir Palomydes in his unrequited love, and Sir Lancelot in his guilty love, do not take ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... had stumbled was as black as Erebus save for one dimly grayish patch, which, I surmised, meant a window. When those heavy feet had clumped down the staircase, silence enveloped us again, beatific silence. Instantly I banished the late Mr. Van Blarcom from my consciousness. With a good stout door between us ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Vernon always enunciated her remarks in a loud and clear voice, so that Paul Ford could not have failed to hear every word. A faint but beatific smile concealed itself roguishly about Paul Ford's mouth, and he looked with a rapt expression on an advertisement above Mrs Clayton Vernon's head, which assured him that, with a certain ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... a woman ... fractious, unfathomable, then fawning and attrite—with a purpose! Beardsley cocked his head and listened, his mien almost beatific. Purpose? This creature had none that could quite match his! He was convinced of it now, and he had never ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... and linking his thoughts together by a simple 'and,' he passes from the unimaginable splendours of the Beatific Vision to the plainest practical talk. Mysticism has often soared so high above the earth that it has forgotten to preach righteousness, and therein has been its weak point. But here is the most mystical teacher of the New Testament insisting on plain morality ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels, or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or awoke, screaming, from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the scepter of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... plates and dishes in the next room, and Marchas said to me, smiling in a beatific manner: 'This is famous; I found the champagne under the flight of steps outside, the brandy—fifty bottles of the very finest—in the kitchen garden under a pear-tree, which did not look to me to be quite straight, when I looked at it by the light of my lantern. As for ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... He hoped, he said, to see her in a few days, but he was immensely busy in closing the term-work before the holidays; he also suggested that their affair—"their" affair!—be kept quiet for the present. Yet he had all too facile a vision of beatific meditations that were like enough to give the situation away to all the household; and he was nervously aware of Amy Leffingwell as continually on the verge ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... destined magazine, heavily weighting her slender thread of story with disquisitions on economy and charity, and meaning to land her heroines upon various industrial asylums where their lot should be far more beatific than marriage, which was reserved for the naughty one to live unhappy in ever after. In fact, Rachel, in her stern consistency, had made up her mind to avoid and discourage the Colonel, and to prevent her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... indestructible thing. This material world on which such vast systems have been superimposed—this may mean anything. It may be a dream, it may be a joke, it may be a trap or temptation, it may be a charade, it may be the beatific vision: the only thing of which we are certain is this human soul. This human soul finds itself alone in a terrible world, afraid of the grass. It has brought forth poetry and religion in order to explain matters; it will bring them forth again. ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... CALOTTE, was seated before an oblong table, covered with rolls of paper and enormous volumes in folio. At his right hand was placed the superior of the Jesuits, and on his left the curate of Montdidier. The curtains were half drawn, and only admitted the mysterious light calculated for beatific reveries. All the mundane objects that generally strike the eye on entering the room of a young man, particularly when that young man is a Musketeer, had disappeared as if by enchantment; and for fear, no doubt, that the sight of them might bring his master back to ideas of this ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Assumption, more than twice seven times is it reiterated in a very brief space, and with slight variations of expression, that Mary was taken up into heaven; and that, not on any general and indefinite idea of her beatific and glorified state, but with reference to one specific single act of divine favour, performed at a fixed time, effecting her assumption, as it is called, "to-day." [AEs. 595.] "To-day Mary the Virgin ascended the heavens. ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... beatific vision,—"Anselm! are you not a pretty fellow to lie snoring there when your brethren are being knocked at head, and Mother Church herself is menaced?—It is a sin and a ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... Thy ruddiest blazing torch, That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch Of the glad Palace of Virginity, May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see; For, crown'd with roses all, 'Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival! But first warn off the beatific spot Those wretched who have not Even afar beheld the shining wall, And those who, once beholding, have forgot, And those, most vile, who dress The charnel spectre drear Of utterly dishallow'd nothingness In that refulgent fame, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... at the nobleman, with fingers obviously itching for action. He sucked his teeth contemptuously, and then turned his back squarely upon the noble countenance. Over his face spread the beatific smile which strong, rough men deem overpowering with a ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... to the dinner. The fare is excellent, the company delightful, and I am just revelling in that beatific state of mind born of a sufficiency of the good things of this earth, when nothing seems to me more pleasant than a City dinner, when I am tapped upon the shoulder by the Toastmaster, who bears a warrant ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Christmastide, if ever, we are bound to take the brightest view which circumstances allow. Let us then assume the best. Let us assume that before next Innocents' Day the war will have ended in a glorious peace. God grant it; but, even in that beatific event, what will become of the children? They cannot be exactly what they would have been if their lot had been cast in normal times. Unknown to themselves, their "subconscious intelligence" must have taken a colour and a tone from the circumstances ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... wonder that the saints of old called it the 'Beatific Vision,' that is, the sight which makes a man utterly blessed; namely, to see, if but for a moment, with his mind's eye what God is like, and ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... the gray pattern of the calico, so affectionately did I regard it as it hung upon the wall—my consecration robe awaiting the beatific day. And Frieda, I am sure, remembers it, too, so longingly did she regard it as the crisp, starchy breadths of it slid between her fingers. But whatever were her longings, she said nothing of them; she bent over the sewing-machine humming an Old-World melody. In every straight, smooth seam, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... a large family. Ursula was the eldest daughter, with the duties of a mother on her much burdened hands; and she had no special inclination towards these duties, so that a week's escape from them was a relief to her at any time. And a ball! But the ball had not been so beatific as Ursula hoped. In her dark blue serge dress, close up to the throat and down to the wrists, she did not look so pale as she had done in her snow-white garments on the previous night; but she was at the best of times a shadowy little person, with soft, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and no ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Vision Beatific be anything more or less than a perpetual representment to each individual Angel of his own present attainments and future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal looking-glasses, reflecting a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas |
